Card of the Week: 1999-00 Upper Deck Century Legends #23 – Ken Dryden

I acquired a personal grail of mine recently when I added this card to my collection: a 1999-2000 Upper Deck Century Legends Ken Dryden. It’s a card that technically does not exist, and yet I have one.

You may recall that I wrote about this back in 2012. The short story is that Dryden did not agree to be a part of the Century Legends trading card set, which ranked the top 50 players according to The Sporting News.

Upper Deck still printed a card — they probably already completed the layout on the sheet to be printed — but replaced Dryden’s photo with the color test pattern (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). They also embossed an image of NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon on it, further making the card easy to find (by sight or by touch) and pull before putting into packs.

Of course, a few got out. A few ALWAYS get out. After wanting one of these for years, I finally got one.

If you take a look at the card sideways, you can better see the Jeff Gordon image that was embossed into it.

The Jeff Gordon card is from the 1999 Wheels High Gear Top Tier insert set.

The back of the card is just plain white with the Upper Deck anti-counterfeiting hologram at the bottom.

It would be nice if Upper Deck and Ken Dryden could one day come to an agreement that would allow the card company to produce a card of him for this set. Then again, it’s been 15 years, so I don’t think Dryden would change his mind anytime soon.

For more about this card, as well as what a potential replacement could look like, check out the Lost Cards article about this card.